Nostalgia & History > Twilight

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Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/15 06:32 by drumwrencher.

Beautiful shot .... I can almost hear it!

Musta been taken on a winter afternoon. #173 was a Saturday-only run due out of San Jose at 4:35.

Thanks for the "smoke", Walter!

-E.O.

The signal bridge is gone the distant one is still there. Lenzon Ave no longer crosses the tracks and the main lines in this picture are now apart of Caltrains CMOF facility. The three main lines curve off to the left of the picture going through where the roundhouse and servicing tracks sat then back to the original configuration around College Park stop.

My favorite railfan bench is on the front of the relay box under the signal bridge. If I had nothing else to do on a Friday night I would go down and watch the evening commute come in. They would cut off the loco's at the station then bring them back to the roundhouse for servicing and turning. They would then make up a long line of loco's to send up to Oakland for weekend freight duties. It was really busy with constant action between 5:00 and 7:30. After that things would quiet down. I would usually leave after the northbound Starlight passed. It was really impressive watching them turn the SDP45's on the turntable. Too bad it's all gone.

I had forgotten about the smoke, the burning brakes.
I can smell it now. Patrick

drumwrencher Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Say, as long as we're at it, it's been several
> years since I worked on diesel engines, but wasn't
> it bad rings that caused a diesel to smoke
> white/gray? Or did Train Masters just have their
> peculiarities...?

With the FM's it was oil that leaked past the rings into the bottom set of the opposed cylinders, which acted like a sump. A few hours idling could produce quite a show, one the throttle was advanced enough to stir up the muck resting on the cylinder heads.

Here's a shot that I 'rescued' from an old neg that shows what happens after a TM has been idling for an extended time. For some reason, the hostler was instructed to move the line of TM's which had been sitting dead all weekend. He fired up one (which obviously had been idling quite awhile before being shut down) and proceeded to shove the others, set handbrakes, residual air in the brake cylinders and all and got them moving (the smoke from the initial part of the shove still lingers at right) then shut-off the throttle too soon. Here's he's trying to get them moving again (note the cloud of sand under the rear truck). I guess he figured that there was enough goop on the ready track rails to keep from flattening any sliding wheels.

-E.O.

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